"When you live together and telework, the dynamics of the couple change a lot," says María, 32, who lives with Gonzalo (37). They have both been working from home for two years and seven months: she in a sustainability consultancy and he in a bank. “Office and home are the same thing. It is more difficult to separate, because the two worlds physically come together”, explains María.
After the pandemic, teleworking became a reality for many people, although it has experienced a slight decline in recent months. According to data provided in March by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, occasional teleworking went from 13.6% to 12.5% and regular teleworking (more than half of the days worked), from 7.9%. at 6.4%. But, what happens when it is shared with the couple? Can you work from home without affecting the relationship?
“I prefer my coworker partner to other coworkers in the office. It's different, there's trust with him," says Giuliana (29), who from May to December last year worked from home with her partner Rodrigo (30), three times a week, coordinating intelligence data collection projects. artificial and him as a financial analyst for a bio food company. “I liked being able to see well what work my partner does,” says Giuliana. And Rodrigo agrees: "You are more involved in his day-to-day activities, you can familiarize yourself and better understand what he does," says Rodrigo.
They see the fact of having separate work spaces as something "super important" so that teleworking does not negatively impact the couple. “He worked at a desk that we had in a room and I with my computer in the common areas. That way, we hardly crossed paths”, says Giuliana. For his part, Rodrigo adds: “Not all couples have this possibility, but it is something quite important; otherwise, when someone has meetings or calls, it gets more complicated”.
"The great risk for a couple who teleworks and lives together at the same time is the hyper-presence of the other person on a day-to-day basis," says the professor at the UOC's Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences and director of Public Emotional Culture , Mireia Cabero. "Even very social people need strategic spaces of physical and mental solitude, that is, of silence, to be able to reflect, make decisions, manage emotional conflicts and think without another sharing space with me."
"The privacy of each person is affected, especially when work spaces are mixed with leisure and rest, common and private spaces, as many families have experienced during confinement," says the psychiatrist and psychotherapist family and partner Víctor Ribes. And he adds: "This means that previous tensions may arise or worsen."
María and Gonzalo also stress the importance of working in different environments. “It is key that everyone has their space to see and hear each other as little as possible, as if everyone were in the office. If there is a door in between, better”, says María and explains: “Before we both worked in the dining room, but I had many meetings and that affected him. We talked it over and decided to buy a desk so I could work in another room. It worked out very well for us."
For her, “it is important to be encouraged to talk about what is not working and find a new way to organize. Communication above all. For the psychologist Mireia Cabero, “it is not surprising that it is difficult for us at the beginning, that we put on washing machines and dryers when it is not necessary or that our mother calls us when the other needs silence. As I have not educated my relational environment yet, it is something that can happen”. As he indicates, "it is about detecting what is not working well, identifying what limits I need to set and executing them, because then I will have the possibility of working from home and doing it without interruptions, without calls and without losing my attention focus" .
Before starting the day, María and Gonzalo discuss what the working day that awaits each of them will be like. “She has the option of going to the office some days, but those days when we are at home, we organize our routines so as not to bother each other,” explains Gonzalo.
"If I have a bad day or I'm short of time, the ideal is to tell the other person to anticipate that they may be irritable or cannot attend to them," explains the psychologist Mireia Cabero and adds: "It's about being aware that each which has challenges, commitments, demands and small professional struggles. Also, to be empathetic when we see that the other person is under pressure. Surely we too have been in a similar situation, where we needed time to reflect without anyone interfering”.
“You have to be respectful. If the other is working, you are not going to play the music at full volume, use the vacuum cleaner or ask him about the supermarket purchase”, says Giuliana.
If the need to interrupt for something urgent arises, what Mireia Cabero recommends is to make an exploratory approach. Questions like: “Do you have a moment?” or "Do you mind if I tell you something?", or simply notifying: "I'll send you a Whatsapp so you can answer me when you can", can help ensure that this interference is not abrupt. "If it is something urgent, it is important to know how to communicate it effectively, quickly, in an orderly manner and very focused on what we need to solve immediately," says Cabero and adds: "Communication also helps us to repair any inconvenience that we may have caused" .
Beyond having differentiated work spaces, confinement has its weight. “Spending more time at home also has consequences on an individual level, since you go out less and enter a less sociable state. Having the option of going to a coworking space or a cafe once or twice a week can be a good thing”, says María and adds “For us it is important not to both be at home 24 hours a day, to go out every day to drink get some fresh air and do sports in the morning or in the afternoon”.
“Being both locked up all day saturates you,” Giuliana agrees and adds: “I don't know if the problem is teleworking itself, because in our case it's like everyone is in their own world and we don't see each other much. But after several days of sharing the same space without going out, the atmosphere becomes a bit tense. It is important to be able to do some activity either alone or with friends, but without your partner, to decompress the relationship a bit”.
Víctor Ribes indicates that “many people who come for a consultation describe that the logistics of family life absorb almost all their time and gradually lose the possibility of planning spaces for couples. This causes sexual intimacy to also be affected.” As he explains, when this difficulty in separating work, parenting, leisure and couple spaces tends to occur most, is when the children are breastfeeding, "because that is when they are most dependent on their parents and there is very little room for as a couple”, as well as when they are adolescents, “which is when they begin to question family routines and it becomes necessary to renegotiate them”.
Some of the solutions that are worked on in therapy -indicates the expert- are the investment of time both in self-care, "which many times in parents is very easy to lose", and in the care of the couple. In cases where a crisis or deeper problems are already going through -he indicates-, "it is possible to propose a treatment or a joint review of the life project of each one".
Taking into account that sharing the work space can be a challenge for the couple, are these adaptation efforts justified? In last year's INE survey, people who teleworked rated their experience very positively, with an average of 8.4 points out of 10.
“There are people who manage their time very well, who can dissociate both physically and mentally the spaces for the work, the personal, the family and the intimate and, therefore, benefit a lot. But for others it means a bigger challenge. Not all people and families have the same needs”, says the psychotherapist Víctor Ribes.
María is clear about it: “You have to know how to handle it and be able to separate the spaces, but with everything I see it as positive. Much more time is gained at home. You don't waste time going to the office and it shows. I make the most of the mornings. I get up at around seven to do yoga, go for a run or read for a while and I only start working at nine. That would be impossible if I had to go to the office.”
For Giuliana, “the ideal is a hybrid, where you can choose when to go to the office and when to stay at home. But if I had to pick one, it would be working from home. Going to the office consumes a lot of energy and when I come home I can't keep doing things”. The psychologist Mireia Cabero considers that “it is an advance in people's lives, since it offers more free time, both for family reconciliation and for hobbies. We need to take care of it so that it can be an opportunity for real emotional well-being and it doesn't turn into something negative."
